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beccaelizabethIt's not that I think I could write it better, because lo, the entire lack of writing lately is not better, it's just I can see what's annoying me and it feels like a lot of it wasnt even the intended point.
Like okay this is apparently a Jack story where everyone else is baggage.
But that's not its biggest problem, we can roll with the hero being the hero.
When constructing a story, I have heard that Lois McMaster Bujold sits down and asks,
What is the worst thing I can do to him now?
And sometimes the answer is something like
be treated as a beginner even after his background leaves him well educated
and sometimes it is
get everything he wants at least twenty years before he's ready for it.
Sometimes it's
his strengths that help him achieve all his goals are the power of ignoring his disability and applying sheer epic bullshit
and sometimes it's
ignoring his disability and applying sheer epic bullshit has made him a danger to himself and others
and now he is going to have to admit it
in order to avoid getting everything he ever wanted.
Those are some excellent situations, right, because they arise from the character strengths and weaknesses, dangle their desires in front of them, and then ask what's the worst thing to put in between where he is and were he wants to be?
(The worst thing is always Himself.)
So okay, how do you get to The Exodus Code by asking
What is the worst thing that can happen to Torchwood now?
or
What is the worst thing that can happen to Jack Harkness?
And there's pieces that lead straight from where their characters were last at into the horror, so, okay:
There's danger to children, there's *becoming* the danger to *their own* children, so that's central to anything that remembers Children of Earth exists.
There's mentions of bits of Miracle Day that I know not of so there's probably threads that lead back to it.
But Gwen's child Anwen is present through a lot of the story and Jack helps take care of her. That ought to bring a lot of issues front and center. Having her be a Torchwood baby because Torchwood stuff has happened to Gwen, having her in danger and realising she's got a lot of the exact same factors as her mum, and the other victims. Focus on how Jack feels about that and on the other child in the story... though honestly I didnt see the other one as a child until Jack reacts real strong to the idea of her in danger right at the end. I think it was the gun that had me reading her as more adult. So, child soldier in the same danger as her parents, check. Strong elements.
There's a whole thing about heightened sexual desire becoming a distraction and you think that thread of the story will go somewhere... which is clearly going to connect to Jack.
And there's Jack's immortality being in no way a solution to the problem of what is happening to his memory and his mind. He starts to fear he's reached the end of his mental function and he'll just have to keep existing while his mind is gone. That one's absolutely solid, could focus the whole Jack story around that. Jack is losing track of details, realises there's chunks of memory missing, realises said memories are essential to saving the world, and he can't blame retcon this time. Decides he personally is losing it. That's a horror story. And easy to connect to danger to children. If you want to do that.
But that's... not really what the story does?
Exodus Code introduces synaesthesia, makes it a quality of Jack and Gwen, then suggests its evidence of being more highly evolved... which is a whole can of worms I dont feel like opening but that... makes messes.
I've got a GURPS Horror book that helps you design rpg campaigns by breaking down what kind of classic horror tropes can be used to build what kind of underlying fears. I'm mostly remembering fear of madness and fear of contamination right now. Book is on the shelf in the other room, and those two will do for talking about Exodus Code.
But one thing to consider is, is the story in the fear of the monster, or the fear of becoming the monster?
Because if the story is about madness you are doing very different things if the focus is fear of becoming mad, or if the focus is fear of mad people.
One of those things is always ablism, the other is... well, only mostly.
and several points mix in faer of contamination, where association with mad women makes more madness, or eventually where a poisonous Mother Earth does.
So the Torchwood book starts out using Gwen's point of view to show her meeting a mad woman, then losing control herself. But as soon as she's ill it switches to Rhys or Jack for a point of view. Gwen becomes object, not subject, and she's baggage for the rest of the story. (I mean they tie her up sedate her and lug her around to places.)
That switches it from a story about the fear of losing your mind, losing your temper, responding to training or traumatic memories with present violence, and doing so in front of your kid...
... to fear of the mad woman.
Whole different thing.
Not least because both Jack and Gwen are vulnerable to the former and logically should worry about the anger management thing, but once it's about Gwen being violent, Jack isnt much vulnerable to that.
So the tension is all in Jack being unable to stop her safely. And that means that something happening to Gwen (her illness, her frustration with real problems somehow slipping into alien induced madness, her not being listened to once the boys decide its alien induced madness) is seen from the point of view of and depicted primarily as a problem of
the guys who care about her.
They might have to hurt her or watch her hurt herself, which is a whole set of fears and tensions, yes, but, again, *is happening to Gwen*.
She loses her mind and she loses her voice and she's not... there any more.
And I don't like Gwen, so if I'm complaining about that absence it's pretty messed up.
And I'm just pulling a few elements from the book to focus on and I know there are many more
but that is part of the problem
because what are we meant to be worrying about? Does the outside physical reflect the inside emotional? Is the mother earth maybe exploding tied in to the many women exploding into violence? Well kinda, yes, but, I feel like this stew is several recipes and I want to pull some out and let the rest have room to be.
I want to make a list of everything that felt like setup and see when where it paid off.
I want to have another go at the Jack flashbacks, because if he's worried about his memories and becoming mentally unstuck in time like someone of his calendar age maybe might if they get ill, then the time shifts could increase the tension about the mental illness if they were framed just slightly different. Actually more Highlander style with match cuts made of associations, triggers in the mind's eye sort of thing.
I feel like you take out the misogyny by making it less weirdly gendered, there's really no fixing that else, but also by making Gwen's point of view a solid... I was going to say half but there's a whole thing with threes going on in the book, so, third of the text. Have Jack be the connection between past and present, between the flashback woman and Gwen, make his mind be the connection so he's figuring it out at the same speed we are. Have Gwen and the flashback lady's decisions be what drives the book as much as Jack's.
Actually, more than, as written, because there's a specific frustration where it reveals at the end the whole secret would have been to just let it happen. No actual problems in this book would have arisen if Jack would have let the... cave and alien energy and shapeshifting girl tie him up and sexually assault him.
... if the shapeshifting alien or the cave full of metal tendrils dont ask him first, and try to make him feel that kind of good, that's still the word for it.
... yikes.
So my brain just kind of stalled on that angle.
Um.
Okay, so, I am not a particular fan of the sort of noir story where you lurch from pain to pain with the only option being to endure. Seems like applying mind and logic should also help. And I felt like that got really messy in Exodus Code. There were scientists, and there was a clever plan that needed them, but in the interests of surprising us with the ending, the reader wasnt let in on all the things. Even when we were riding Jack's point of view real close sometimes. Which feels unsatisfying somehow. How is the guy whose head we're in still somehow keeping all the secrets?
So if you jump heads, which the text does, and spend time with people who have different angles on what is going on, then... why not keep Gwen through the end?
And, how does the ending pay off Gwen's problems? How does it resolve them?
Well it doesnt because she wasnt actually there or involved
but it looked like
she got to do Torchwood things to make the world a better place for her daughter, rather than sitting around feeling like she'd given up her career for her daughter, and that feels like a solid story.
Tell it from Gwen's point of view and it's anger management via finding the actual problems.
She loves her daughter and that is compatible with her work because looking after her is happening either way.
Solid!
Don't feel like I got told that story without... taking it apart for parts. I can salvage that story. I dont think I read it.
I feel like what got published is a vivid and imaginative draft that could have been focused in tighter, dumped the ablism, and the sexism, by having everyone deal with their own emotions from their own point of view, while getting to beat a whole alien thing that mirrored their issues somewhat more precisely.
Also! If the cave whatsit just wanted to eat Jack, there is a real problem with him only being wanted for his body, *again*. I mean the ending happens the same if he *has* lost his mind, it certainly appeared to for Gwen, and that's a problem.
Jack letting Abaddon eat him was part of a whole suicide arc. Gwen letting the earth cave whatsit eat her didnt feel like that even in a book where she had already attempted suicide. Because Gwen had stopped being present in her own story by then.
I dont get how the ending dealt with the fears or paid off the... anything.
It just kind of happened.
I'm going to let it go again, I just, keep niggling at this book like I want to unravel it and keep the yarn.
Some of the yarn.
ish.
I feel mean criticising it though. Look, a complete book happened, that's winning.
just, it could have... been better. actually.
Like okay this is apparently a Jack story where everyone else is baggage.
But that's not its biggest problem, we can roll with the hero being the hero.
When constructing a story, I have heard that Lois McMaster Bujold sits down and asks,
What is the worst thing I can do to him now?
And sometimes the answer is something like
be treated as a beginner even after his background leaves him well educated
and sometimes it is
get everything he wants at least twenty years before he's ready for it.
Sometimes it's
his strengths that help him achieve all his goals are the power of ignoring his disability and applying sheer epic bullshit
and sometimes it's
ignoring his disability and applying sheer epic bullshit has made him a danger to himself and others
and now he is going to have to admit it
in order to avoid getting everything he ever wanted.
Those are some excellent situations, right, because they arise from the character strengths and weaknesses, dangle their desires in front of them, and then ask what's the worst thing to put in between where he is and were he wants to be?
(The worst thing is always Himself.)
So okay, how do you get to The Exodus Code by asking
What is the worst thing that can happen to Torchwood now?
or
What is the worst thing that can happen to Jack Harkness?
And there's pieces that lead straight from where their characters were last at into the horror, so, okay:
There's danger to children, there's *becoming* the danger to *their own* children, so that's central to anything that remembers Children of Earth exists.
There's mentions of bits of Miracle Day that I know not of so there's probably threads that lead back to it.
But Gwen's child Anwen is present through a lot of the story and Jack helps take care of her. That ought to bring a lot of issues front and center. Having her be a Torchwood baby because Torchwood stuff has happened to Gwen, having her in danger and realising she's got a lot of the exact same factors as her mum, and the other victims. Focus on how Jack feels about that and on the other child in the story... though honestly I didnt see the other one as a child until Jack reacts real strong to the idea of her in danger right at the end. I think it was the gun that had me reading her as more adult. So, child soldier in the same danger as her parents, check. Strong elements.
There's a whole thing about heightened sexual desire becoming a distraction and you think that thread of the story will go somewhere... which is clearly going to connect to Jack.
And there's Jack's immortality being in no way a solution to the problem of what is happening to his memory and his mind. He starts to fear he's reached the end of his mental function and he'll just have to keep existing while his mind is gone. That one's absolutely solid, could focus the whole Jack story around that. Jack is losing track of details, realises there's chunks of memory missing, realises said memories are essential to saving the world, and he can't blame retcon this time. Decides he personally is losing it. That's a horror story. And easy to connect to danger to children. If you want to do that.
But that's... not really what the story does?
Exodus Code introduces synaesthesia, makes it a quality of Jack and Gwen, then suggests its evidence of being more highly evolved... which is a whole can of worms I dont feel like opening but that... makes messes.
I've got a GURPS Horror book that helps you design rpg campaigns by breaking down what kind of classic horror tropes can be used to build what kind of underlying fears. I'm mostly remembering fear of madness and fear of contamination right now. Book is on the shelf in the other room, and those two will do for talking about Exodus Code.
But one thing to consider is, is the story in the fear of the monster, or the fear of becoming the monster?
Because if the story is about madness you are doing very different things if the focus is fear of becoming mad, or if the focus is fear of mad people.
One of those things is always ablism, the other is... well, only mostly.
and several points mix in faer of contamination, where association with mad women makes more madness, or eventually where a poisonous Mother Earth does.
So the Torchwood book starts out using Gwen's point of view to show her meeting a mad woman, then losing control herself. But as soon as she's ill it switches to Rhys or Jack for a point of view. Gwen becomes object, not subject, and she's baggage for the rest of the story. (I mean they tie her up sedate her and lug her around to places.)
That switches it from a story about the fear of losing your mind, losing your temper, responding to training or traumatic memories with present violence, and doing so in front of your kid...
... to fear of the mad woman.
Whole different thing.
Not least because both Jack and Gwen are vulnerable to the former and logically should worry about the anger management thing, but once it's about Gwen being violent, Jack isnt much vulnerable to that.
So the tension is all in Jack being unable to stop her safely. And that means that something happening to Gwen (her illness, her frustration with real problems somehow slipping into alien induced madness, her not being listened to once the boys decide its alien induced madness) is seen from the point of view of and depicted primarily as a problem of
the guys who care about her.
They might have to hurt her or watch her hurt herself, which is a whole set of fears and tensions, yes, but, again, *is happening to Gwen*.
She loses her mind and she loses her voice and she's not... there any more.
And I don't like Gwen, so if I'm complaining about that absence it's pretty messed up.
And I'm just pulling a few elements from the book to focus on and I know there are many more
but that is part of the problem
because what are we meant to be worrying about? Does the outside physical reflect the inside emotional? Is the mother earth maybe exploding tied in to the many women exploding into violence? Well kinda, yes, but, I feel like this stew is several recipes and I want to pull some out and let the rest have room to be.
I want to make a list of everything that felt like setup and see when where it paid off.
I want to have another go at the Jack flashbacks, because if he's worried about his memories and becoming mentally unstuck in time like someone of his calendar age maybe might if they get ill, then the time shifts could increase the tension about the mental illness if they were framed just slightly different. Actually more Highlander style with match cuts made of associations, triggers in the mind's eye sort of thing.
I feel like you take out the misogyny by making it less weirdly gendered, there's really no fixing that else, but also by making Gwen's point of view a solid... I was going to say half but there's a whole thing with threes going on in the book, so, third of the text. Have Jack be the connection between past and present, between the flashback woman and Gwen, make his mind be the connection so he's figuring it out at the same speed we are. Have Gwen and the flashback lady's decisions be what drives the book as much as Jack's.
Actually, more than, as written, because there's a specific frustration where it reveals at the end the whole secret would have been to just let it happen. No actual problems in this book would have arisen if Jack would have let the... cave and alien energy and shapeshifting girl tie him up and sexually assault him.
... if the shapeshifting alien or the cave full of metal tendrils dont ask him first, and try to make him feel that kind of good, that's still the word for it.
... yikes.
So my brain just kind of stalled on that angle.
Um.
Okay, so, I am not a particular fan of the sort of noir story where you lurch from pain to pain with the only option being to endure. Seems like applying mind and logic should also help. And I felt like that got really messy in Exodus Code. There were scientists, and there was a clever plan that needed them, but in the interests of surprising us with the ending, the reader wasnt let in on all the things. Even when we were riding Jack's point of view real close sometimes. Which feels unsatisfying somehow. How is the guy whose head we're in still somehow keeping all the secrets?
So if you jump heads, which the text does, and spend time with people who have different angles on what is going on, then... why not keep Gwen through the end?
And, how does the ending pay off Gwen's problems? How does it resolve them?
Well it doesnt because she wasnt actually there or involved
but it looked like
she got to do Torchwood things to make the world a better place for her daughter, rather than sitting around feeling like she'd given up her career for her daughter, and that feels like a solid story.
Tell it from Gwen's point of view and it's anger management via finding the actual problems.
She loves her daughter and that is compatible with her work because looking after her is happening either way.
Solid!
Don't feel like I got told that story without... taking it apart for parts. I can salvage that story. I dont think I read it.
I feel like what got published is a vivid and imaginative draft that could have been focused in tighter, dumped the ablism, and the sexism, by having everyone deal with their own emotions from their own point of view, while getting to beat a whole alien thing that mirrored their issues somewhat more precisely.
Also! If the cave whatsit just wanted to eat Jack, there is a real problem with him only being wanted for his body, *again*. I mean the ending happens the same if he *has* lost his mind, it certainly appeared to for Gwen, and that's a problem.
Jack letting Abaddon eat him was part of a whole suicide arc. Gwen letting the earth cave whatsit eat her didnt feel like that even in a book where she had already attempted suicide. Because Gwen had stopped being present in her own story by then.
I dont get how the ending dealt with the fears or paid off the... anything.
It just kind of happened.
I'm going to let it go again, I just, keep niggling at this book like I want to unravel it and keep the yarn.
Some of the yarn.
ish.
I feel mean criticising it though. Look, a complete book happened, that's winning.
just, it could have... been better. actually.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-17 01:46 am (UTC)It makes me want to write things, wish I was in a writing-things place. So, thank you for sharing your thoughts.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-20 06:48 am (UTC)